Last fall, the nation was fixated on the botched launch of the federal health insurance website, HealthCare.gov. When introduced, the software was plagued with frequent freezes and crashes. There were congressional hearings and officials in charge were grilled by Congress. The flawed website effort cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

This week, a small news item from the Associated Press was a reminder of what many were saying during the HealthCare.gov debate — the federal government does a poor job of managing information technology (IT) projects.

The AP story reveals that the Social Security Admininstration has spent $300 million on new software to improve processing of SS disability claims, but the system isn’t working. Social Security began the upgrade project six years ago, but an audit by consultants McKinsey & Co. found that the project had been poorly managed and had missed multiple deadlines.

That’s a familiar story with federal IT projects — many fail, some are simply abandoned; most are way over budget and go years past original deadlines.

During the botched launch of the health care website, Republicans in Congress made speeches about flaws and costs of the HealthCare.gov website — they demanded accountability.

Where is Congress now? Where have elected leaders been for the past few decades, as billions of dollars have been wasted on failed IT projects?

According to one study, from 2003 to 2012, less than 10 percent of federal IT projects were a success, in terms of budget and timelines. About 50 percent missed deadlines, were over budget or didn’t meet users’ expecations. About 40 percent of the IT projects were simply dropped, abandoned or started over, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

The Washington Business Journal noted that $41.2 billion in taxpayers’ dollars has been directed to federal information technology projects — and 25 percent or more of those projects are at risk, meaning $10 billion could be wasted.

The federal Office of Management and Budget, trying to get a grip on federal IT spending, created the “IT Dashboard” website to track projects. A recent OMB report showed 283 out of 759 major IT projects were cause for “significant concern” or requiring management attention.

As troubling as the Dashboard data might be, concerns are growing as the GAO saying that some federal agencies are removing their projects from the Dashboard website, presumably so failures cannot be identified — and critical attention avoided.

The House Oversight Committee is looking into what went wrong with the Social Security disability claims project.

The highly critical McKinsey report, which some in Congress believe SS officials tried to bury, noted that despite the size and complexity of the project, no one person was in charge.

It’s easy to blame managerial incompetence or burdensome bureaucracies for failed IT projects. But the challenges cannot be overstated, with federal agencies often using outdated hardware running many different software systems that cannot talk with each other. In the case of the SS project, the goal was to replace 54 separate antiquated computer systems used to process disability claims, and to reduce the 100 days it takes to process an initial claim as well as the 400 days for the appeal process to be completed.

Many technology professionals say the federal government’s procurement system and burdensome paperwork requirements have not changed in 50 years, and are not well-suited to today’s fast-changing IT world.

The firestorm over HeatlhCare.gov looks like it was more about politics than about fixing flawed federal IT projects and stemming the waste of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. The faltering Social Security IT project will give Congress a chance to focus on solutions to failed IT projects rather than playing the failed projects for political gain.